Have been skinny dipping a lot. Not enough, in my opinion, but more than usual. The removal of two flimsy pieces of polyester shouldn't make such a difference and yet - and yet! - swimming isn't swimming when clothed. It reminded me of something.
Actually, I was reminded of it - of him - weeks ago. I was having one of those perfect Melbourne Saturdays. Met V for pastry and two indulgent coffees, walked aimlessly contemplating every pub, every op shop, every restaurant in latent afternoon heat. Anything possible but nothing necessary. You know that feeling? To do-less.
I was ambling. Ambient music plugged into my ears as I meandered towards the oncoming night. Everything slow - the melting of the sky, the scuff of my shoes, the smile spreading - a gentle come up as the violins soared in my ears and the traffic whooshed by and the birds were disturbed as I crunched through Edinburgh gardens and I was a small little nobody, busy-bodying their way through a Saturday.
Swimming home from my favourite pub - the kind that understands a bar counter is more than a place to slam a pint or an EFTPOS machine down on but rather an altar to ornament with bar stools and sticky elbows and people who come to chat about the day and others to escape from it - I was on the street again. The one on which he - we - stood consolidated. And in the Saturday hedonism of couples in French bistros, girlies in the cocktail bars, lads, hands pocketed, shoes white, heading Neanderthal into the night, it all came back to me.
And even though I think I'm writing about boys too much, I wrote about him. I should be telling you about nature, and the way the mountains look at sunset, and how the air feels different at dawn and how, when we're driving down the highway, yellow fields on our left, cobalt lake on our right, singing our hearts out into the orange heat, I'm scared my heart might just stop beating with the happiness. I don't know where those words are, why they feel hard to write. Perhaps because it's so obvious - a mountain is a mountain is a mountain - and I, at its base, at its summit, am simply not equal to the task of describing it. Boys feel easier. This is a poem - the only one - about the lawyer. And your reminder to take your clothes off - as often as is humanly possible.
lawyer
We were on Gertrude street
when you said you hated skinny dipping.
I said WHAT
skidded to a halt, mentally
but in reality kept up, hobbling
(we’d a reservation for bastardised Italian -
you’d suggested it, made it, I’d shown up sweating
for cocktails and, enamoured with expatiating
and the velour armchair, made us later.)
At least the server was amused,
took my side of the argument,
(because I’d asked him to, while he brought flutes
of twisted negronis and inverted lemon myrtle martinis.)
I was probably supposed to tip him for this, didn’t.
I love it, I said -
skinny-dipping, that is. I know,
I went off on a tangent recalling it all,
didn’t know I still cared this much but then I
can’t remember if I was crestfallen or incredulous?
We stared at each other nonetheless and
in that moment I cursed you incompatible,
probably did that sad, slow smile -
very Zooey Deschanel in 500 Days of Summer -
all irresistible but incorrigibly unattainable
as I hexed you, hung a neon sign of ‘ex’ above your head,
unsure if that made it easier,
this whole infatuation business, at least
it felt powerful: to spring free
from the tethers of needing you.
You were busy being tall and different.
Secure attachment meant you didn’t
read too much into disparity (freak)
so instead you were undressing me -
right there in the April street.
Unsheathing ingrown hair scarred pink,
the invisible bristling beneath Lycra tights,
undressing metaphorically, I mean,
unravelling the practised choreography,
stepping me out of the rôle of Girl and into
something completely unexpected: me.
How it happened:
I think I said: do I seem spontaneous?
Or perhaps you said: do you think you’re spontaneous?
Which is a completely different question altogether.
Regardless, you answered it
(so perhaps it was rhetorical after all).
You said:
I think you like curated spontaneity.
You’re impulsive when it suits you
but not actually as laidback as you seem.
I was stopping again, mouth gaping -
of course this is still ostensibly about skinny dipping
but you get that it’s also about more than that, right?
Forget the curse, I’m pretty sure
I was close to loving you, then.
Falling into it, maybe
just for a second, or simply catching
a glimpse of the elusive ‘could be’
Because finally I wasn't tap dancing in some eternal rehearsal.
Rejigging the same old reliable steps, limp and lacklustre,
performance for pleasure's sake,
dance for the love of dancing -
no. This was transcending choreography,
unfurling into something organic -
I don’t think it would be a lie to say authentic?
in the sense I was caught unawares,
my tried-tested responses weren't fitting
because you were interpolating in a way I hadn’t predicted,
couldn’t automatic pilot my way through the chat like:
say something sarcastic but charming thing here -
reveal something superficially vulnerable there -
listen and ask interested questions um, everywhere??
because that is called getting to know someone??
anyway, women will know why I’m ranting, back to storytelling -
all this I couldn’t do,
including the making of pretty faces
while indignantly waiting for you to take my mask off -
the mask of all of the above and more -
because you’d done it, unfurled me
like a piece of string and I hadn’t seen it coming.
You smiled like you’d won something -
or did I?
And when I resumed our walk,
one foot in front of another,
a linear waltz
to the restaurant waiting
(see I can really keep this dancing metaphor going)
it wasn’t from a place of knowing -
knowing where we were heading,
how this would end, everything
that could and would be said, refuted, bantered,
given up to the infinite nights,
misremembered in the sharp-edged prison of daylight -
it was from a place of feeling.
Feeling that maybe your hand is the exact, precise, right-sized hand for mine.
Feeling that if I was sick you’d know
what snacks to bring, without me telling you,
would bring them even though I said I was fine,
because you know I’d rather die
than ask for help, admit weakness.
Feeling that I’d like all that -
the nakedness, the idiosyncrasies, the normalcy -
I guess that’s what happens when,
in one of those rare seconds,
you’re seen.
You let me eat all the bread at the restaurant.
It didn’t last.
